The woman in white at the platform's edge. She turns again, darts that searching look over her shoulder. She finds him—she finds his eyes. What is she looking for? The confidence she needs so she can do what must be done? Or is she pleading with him, begging him one last time to reconsider? Will doesn't know. All he knows is that she looks. She needs to look.
"It interests me," Hannibal says, "that on this case you feel more kinship with the victims than with their killer."
Will comes back to himself. Hannibal and Alana are still there, still sitting too close together, still watching him. Will shakes his head, brushing off Hannibal's suggestion.
"It's not kinship," he says. "It's curiosity. I want to understand them."
"Do you think of yourself as a victim, Will?"
"No." He answers immediately, wanting to get back to business.
A shift in Hannibal's expression. "As a killer, then?"
"No."
Earlier Will resisted discussion of the Subway Pusher case, but now he finds it's the only subject he cares to talk to Hannibal about. He is very aware of Alana's presence, her watchful silence.
He tries to stay calm and on topic as he says, "If I'm going to help Jack then I need to know who these women were. Their frame of mind is more important to me than the scene of the crime."
"Perhaps you find it safer to empathize with the victims," Hannibal says, "rather than exposing yourself to the thoughts of their killer. It's your last defense, your way of protecting yourself from re-experiencing the thrill of murder."
Will ignores this, and wishes Alana would ignore it too, but he can see her contemplating and giving credence to Hannibal's words. When Will tries to imply Hannibal is a murderer, Alana treats him as if he has said something unreasonable. But when Hannibal implies Will is a murderer, Alana drinks it in.
Will wrenches himself back to the case, speaks in a voice just shy of a shout. "The Pusher's victims made the decision to jump. They died by choice, not the Pusher's. If we can understand that choice, if we can understand them, then maybe we can catch their killer."
Up until now Alana has been content to observe Will and Hannibal's discussion without participating. But now she clears her throat. "They may not have felt they had a choice. These women… they may have been despondent, Will. Beyond saving."
Hannibal angles his head at Alana. "You are suggesting a suicide pact?"
"These weren't suicides," Will says, before she can answer.
"They could be suicides," Alana says. "Didn't one of the victims have clinical depression?"
Will feels nettled. "Phillipa Goldthwaite. But she had treatment, it was under control. She was doing better."
"You know recovery can often be a truce, not a victory," Alana says. Will's skin prickles at her gentle tone. Alana isn't talking about just Phillipa Goldthwaite.
"A suicide pact," Hannibal repeats, pretending to weigh this theory; the mocking twist of his mouth suggests he doesn't believe a word of it. "No pusher at all. Just these women and their pain."
"It wasn't a pact," Will snaps. "These women didn't know each other. There's no connection."
Will is losing his temper, but Hannibal remains as smooth as glass. "But you hypothesize that the Pusher knew each of these women individually?"
"They didn't kill themselves because they were depressed!" Will presses his fists into his thighs for emphasis. "They killed themselves because the Pusher forced them to. He talked them into it. How would he do that?" He spits this last question at Hannibal with almost violent force.
"Will…" says Alana.
"How would he do it?" Will repeats, ignoring her.
Hannibal looks reticent, under attack. "I couldn't say for certain."
Will rubs his face in frustration. "I'm not asking you to say for certain. I'm asking for your professional opinion. If you were the Pusher, how would you talk these women into jumping?"
"Will," Alana says, again. "Try to calm down."
Will barely hears her. He is so invested in Hannibal's answer that he's having trouble breathing. Because Hannibal would know, wouldn't he? If anyone could persuade someone to leap in front of a train, Hannibal could.
"It's all right," Hannibal says to Alana, laying one hand gently on her wrist. He turns back to Will, calm and collected and helpful as always. "If I were the Pusher," he says, "I suppose I would have to present the train to my victims as the more desirable of two appalling options. The lesser of two evils."
Will leans forward. "And what's the greater evil?"
Both he and Alana are staring at Hannibal. He hunches a little under the force of their attention, his expression apologetic, but his voice is cool and neutral as he speaks of horrors.
"All three of the victims had families, did they not? Parents, husbands, children. Perhaps if the Pusher's victims hadn't hurled themselves in front of the train—an action that doesn't necessarily result in death—something even worse might have befallen their families."
Yes. Of course. Under Will's breath, without thinking, he says, "Amazing, what you can make people do, when they believe that harm may come to those they love."
As if in response, Hannibal narrows the distance between himself and Alana.
"You think they committed suicide to protect their families?" Alana asks skeptically. She re-crosses her legs, perhaps a subconscious reaction to Hannibal's encroachment on her personal space. "How would that work? The Pusher would have to have considerable resources and sway for the victims to believe their families were in real physical danger. He'd need to be someone with connections in organized crime."
Will shakes his head. "If someone from a criminal syndicate wanted these women dead, he would've made their deaths look accidental. He wouldn't have dressed them up in identical clothing, linking the crimes."
"He didn't necessarily have to put their families in physical danger," says Hannibal. "There are other ways to threaten and destroy."
Understanding leaps instantly from Hannibal to Will; he feels it as a shiver coursing over him. He says: "Information cuts deeper than any knife."
"The preservation of secrets," Hannibal says, with the smallest of smiles. "A very strong push indeed."
"Throw yourself in front of a train, rather than have the people whose opinions you value think the worst of you?" Will says.
Hannibal nods. "A blackmailer who accepts only death as his payment."
They speak quickly, breathlessly, the idea pounding into shape between them. Alana's eyes flick back-and-forth, back-and-forth as if following a tennis match.
"He may not be a crime boss," Will says, "but he's someone with power. Or at least with power behind him. Authority."
"He had access to the most personal details of these women's lives," Hannibal says.
"They knew him," Will says. "When he said he'd tell their families if they didn't jump, they believed him. He's someone they confided in, someone they trusted, or used to trust."
"A social worker," Hannibal suggests.
"Or a psychiatrist," says Will.
As soon as he says it, he knows it's a mistake. Their duet breaks down, and disharmony reigns anew.
Hannibal takes a long inhale through his nose. "Ah. I thought we might come to that."
"I'm not suggesting you're the Subway Pusher," Will says.
"Aren't you?" Hannibal says, but he's looking at Alana.
"You should get some rest, Will," she says. She smoothes down her skirt as she stands up. "You can't eat, sleep, and breathe this case."
"I—I—I know he's not the Subway Pusher," Will says, with panic effervescing in his veins. Hannibal has steered him into a dark corner and left him there, with Alana watching all the while. Who knows what she thinks of him now?
"I know he's not, Alana," he says again, trying not to stammer. "I do know."
"I know," she says quietly, with a tight smile. "It's all right. We'll talk about it next time." As Hannibal helps her with her coat, she leans into his ear and whispers, "But you I'd like to talk to right now."
"Certainly," says Hannibal, folding his own coat back over his arm. "Please take care of yourself, Will. Until we meet again."
Will says nothing. The sight of the pair of them, standing there with their coats, wishing him goodnight, it makes him feel like a child whose parents are abandoning him with the babysitter while they glide off to their moonlit revelries. God, what an image; what perverse corner of his mind gave birth to that? He realizes he's still staring at them, and that they are waiting in increasingly anxious silence for him to acknowledge their goodbyes.
Without a word, he turns and throws himself down on his cot. After a moment he hears their footsteps receding down the corridor in perfect synchronicity.
His head is spinning. He might be sick. Hannibal holds two fingers against Alana's elbow as they walk together up the corridor. But Will can't see that, he is face down on his cot. And yet he sees it, sees it clearly. Sees the disappointment and shock in Alana's face, the satisfaction under the mask of solicitude on Hannibal's. Again he sees them in front of his cell, sitting close together, close enough to feel the heat from each other's bodies. He has to stop. One little nudge and his imagination runs amuck. This is Hannibal's design.
The Pusher manipulates his victims by threatening to use their secrets, their past mistakes, to turn their families against them. The only family Will has is the FBI and Alana. And Hannibal, slowly but surely, has laced their thoughts with poison.
A roar in Will's ears. The train is coming. The train thunders through the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It tears through wall after wall, bricks crumbling to dust in its wake. The headlights blast through the hospital's perpetual gloom. They shine through Will's closed lids; he sees the vivid red of blood. The train smashes the bars of Will's cell and then it smashes him.
But the train is only in Will's mind. Hannibal never gave him any choice. The Pusher is a kinder man than Hannibal.
The pendulum swings. He is Hannibal Lecter and he sits with Alana Bloom in front of the fireplace in his office. He is admiring the interplay of light and shadow across the stirring canvas that is her anxious face. He watches the elegant way her fingers twist and twist around her glass of wine.
"He seems like himself one moment and like someone else the next. Between his illness and that place…what if we're losing him?"
He takes a sip of his wine, pretending to need time to compose himself, to compose his answer, when really he just requires a few more seconds to appreciate her distress.
Then he says, "Will lost himself during his illness, and now he is fighting his way back to himself. The rediscovery of who he is, it's something Will must do for himself, Alana. Our help can only take him so far."
"I saw him when he was sick," Alana says, shaking her head, "and he was never like this." She looks up at him, her eyes wide. "The way he spoke to you…like you're some kind of monster."
Hannibal sighs. Alana responds to vulnerability, to victimhood. It is becoming easy for him to assume this shape for her. "Will trusted me once. He feels he trusted me too completely, shared too much of himself with me, so much so that now he must punish me for it."
"I still think you should stop seeing him," says Alana, her voice throaty with emotion. "It's doing neither of you any good."
"If I remain patient, and resolute, I believe I can do him some good," Hannibal says, with an air of quiet heroism. "I won't give up on him. I believe you and I have that in common."
"We do," she says softly.
"But seeing him like this…it is unspeakably painful."
"It is."
"It hurts me," he says, "to see you in pain."
She only looks at him. He can see the firelight in her eyes.
"You care about Will very deeply," he says.
And slowly she nods.
"I admire you, for the way you are able to balance your personal feelings with your professional responsibilities."
"I'm not balanced," Alana says. "Maybe I was, once. But now I've gone decidedly lopsided. I'm too close to him, Hannibal. I worry I'm hurting him by involving myself in his case. He needs a champion who doesn't…" She looks away, embarrassed. "…Who doesn't have a personal stake in his innocence."
"You are the best champion he could ever ask for," Hannibal says, with feeling.
"I try to be."
He leans forward. "It is in your nature to be a caregiver, Alana. That is why you are such an effective therapist. You care, and care deeply. You needn't apologize for that. But at some point, in order to remain a successful caregiver, you must accept that you need care in return."
"I have a psychiatrist," Alana says. "You've had him to dinner."
Hannibal puts down his wine. He takes her hand. "My dear Dr. Bloom, I'm not talking about psychiatry…"
